Monday, October 14, 2013

Halloween Wars - Week 2

Welcome back to the part of the horror movie where the camera crew throws cats at us until one mutates into a rampaging hell beast and gouges out someone's eyes. (probably the funny sidekick)

That's right, you're back into:
Our guest judge this week was the candyman, who didn't actually bring any candy or sing about what he can do. Total let down.
You've shed your innocent blood all over the couch.

Since Food Network locked itself into these small challenges, they've got no choice but to keep flogging that decaying horse until candy or maggots fall out. This week's little challenge proves just how far down the "I don't give a fuck" hole they've fallen.

Something out of Greek Mythology, in 45 minutes. Go!
*cue 20 minute raspberry*
Yes, you read that right. Greek Mythology. You know all those old stories of Hercules covering the Aegean stables in cheap spiderwebs that always clump on the ends. Or when Ulysses tricked Poseidon into giving him two pieces of candy by switching around his costume. Such a Halloween revering culture there has never been seen.

Rather than shake their fists, storm off, or declare mutiny and burn down the soundstage the four remaining teams shrugged and got down to making Greek Myth or something.
Gouge out the stupid!

Our first team gave us the Minotaur inside his Labyrinth. I added 100 extra points for them knowing the Minotaur was trapped inside the not-a-maze. 
After eating all of his cherry gushers, Ol' Miny tried to wedge through the pantry door for more only to have a red Cthulhu(tastier than traditional green) yank him back.
 They decided to skip over that whole father pissed off Poseidon (never a smart idea, even the Greek Gods thought that guy was crazy) who got his revenge by forcing his wife to mount a bull. And that's how our friendly minotaur was born. Greek myths are such classic family friendly tales.
A Minotaur or a future tattoo for Bull's fans?

Team 2 gave us Gangee 5: Snakes on the Pain
Nope, I'm sorry, apparently that is Medusa. Though since it's just her decapitated head I suppose Perseus put down the robotic owl long enough to get his ass going on dicing up Gorgons.
Moral of the story, don't get raped by a god when you're working for Athena. The goddess of wisdom and war has some seriously fucked up revenge plans.

 
Who's an adorable pile of snakes? You are, yes you are.

This next team knew only slightly more about Greek mythology than people honestly searching for Atlantis. Greek makes me think of uh back hair, yogurt, lamb, gyros...I know we'll make a griffin!
Griffin's look like a lump of discarded pastillage tossed on top of a pumpkin, right?
 An undead zombie with serious nose problems that sprouted giant butterfly wings?
Some kind of horned goat skeleton? Seriously guys, what the hell is a griffin? Eh who cares, stick it on a scary pumpkin. Good enough.

Our last team gave us the Cyclops:
Apparently he'd broken the chains of the underworld and was trying to escape.
So I guess ol' Cyclops was just visiting his uncle Hades and they got into a bit of a disagreement about the mini-bar bill as he went to leave.

"It was only three pomegranate seeds! Gods, get over yourself Uncle Hadey!"
Feed me Seymour! Feed me!

It should come as little to no surprise that Cyclops on a family outing (with nary a Havok in sight, thank Zeus) won. And tell them what amazing prize package they won!

Why, a five night stay in our haunted pit of discarded contestants. It's 30 feet by 40 with a full ten feet of spiked depth. Wouldn't want anyone to escape early, now would we? You can enjoy the haunting smells of decaying fondant and foot while watching stale cake harden until it can be carved to form a crude spade. After ten years and a kindly old man telling you about the treasure he buried on an island, you can finally escape!

Having wasted enough time by trying to pretend that Greek mythology has anything to do with Halloween aside from dunk guys wandering around in cinched up bed sheets, we got down to the meat of the matter.
What's in the box?! Come on what's in the box?!

Make me a spooky nursery rhyme.

*record scratch*

Doesn't that sound an awful lot like "Make me a haunted fairy tale" only more constricting as one is a short story and the other a limerick you can tell around children?

Are your writers/producers/ten year old nephew just cribbing everything you did in the first year? Because if so my prediction is that a team will just do the real way the nursery rhyme ends (Red getting eaten) one will be preferable to the real ending (Sleeping beauty not being raped and having the kid suck out the splinter) one will make no fucking sense at all (the giant being a giant sun on top of the beanstalk) and one will just be some tiny tableau with an iota of spooky in the corner (the Hansel and Gretel gingerbread house where the witch was getting her stew on).

I'm the Nostradamus of cake competitions.

They could only scrounge out a few milliliters of drama™ for the show. The first was by showing some sugar spider webs that hit the floor. I feel so bad for the Food Network roombas, all that sugar they eat up must be giving them robo-diabetes. 

Then later, after a few commercial breaks, team "has got to be paying everyone off" got into such a southern accent fight I was afraid I'd accidentally switched over to TLC by mistake.
Honey boo boo, duck calls, poor redneck porn for the schadenfreudic middle class masses!

But to the cake! The team that created the minotaur/squid monster gave us Miss Muffet (the Hansel Gingerbread house as it were):

Do you want to sleep tonight? I didn't think so.

Shelob was just giving her doll some homemade cotton candy, no reason to get all up in her thorax. Shesh.

Our Cyclops team went screw you and this entire competition, we're doing a witch damn it!
Witchy Cake, witchy cake, crazy man
Give me a fuck as fast as you can
Roll it, pat it, mark it with a :P
Put it on the table for candyman and me

Supposedly, it was to represent Patty-Cake but no one was buying that.
They stuck a cake up on the shelf and but a B on it because in the middle of the competition someone wandered off to find a person with kids and learned there weren't actually any witches trapping pumpkin souls in that nursery rhyme.
Though considering how amazing their cake sculptor is I don't blame them for going the "We're making a witch because I can make an awesome witch so suck it!" route. 

I have mad props for this next team, not because of their piece (which was cool) but because they not only did a nursery rhyme they referred it to Bloody Mary: Queen of the Britons who really loved chopping up Lutherans.
Mary, Mary, quite scary,
How does your garden grow?
With zombie culls and skele' sculls
And scary bones all in a row.

Growing the undead is easy until late spring when you have to spray for maggots.
The cold is god's way of telling us to burn more Protestants.

This last team, oh this last team, did the Red Riding Hood approach by just finishing the nursery rhyme. They say it's the butcher's wife getting the blind mice's tails and not a cartoon bear that leaped off a ziggy panel that is dangling some spaghetti before her little mouse friends.

If, like me, you've been watching this show from the very beginning you'd expect the judges to call them out on how damn cartoony their butcher's wife (sporting a very lush goatee) looks. How it just isn't scary. That making a woman with two chins is the most terrifying things you can think of is incredibly myopic. But you'd be wrong, screaming at the tv threatening it with a brick wrong.

They loved the bloody thing. And yes, this is the same team that did Zombie slug as well. 

Someone has got to be on the take, because the judges took one look at this pathetic, kid's play kitchen meat and said it looked realistic.

I hope they're actually vegetarians who haven't seen real steaks in decades as opposed to people who keep accidentally eating the plastic food furniture stores put on the tables.
I do not get it. Are the mice lined with $100 bills or something? Was their tasting element full of death threats to their families? (Oh yeah, this is the first and last time I'll bring up the tasting element because no one gives a rat's mutilated tuchus about it!) 

It should came as little to no surprise that Shelob brushing her doll's hair was sent home and Mary, Mary quite Scary was awarded the win so they wouldn't have their piece whipped at cars driving past the Food Network building.
Go big, or go home. Unless it's too big then you should have scaled back. And couldn't you add some detail, but that's too much detail. Show us scary, but not too scary. Get the right kind of scary or you're wasting our time. Gah! I'll just do it myself!

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